Thung Sin Nio

In 1930, Thung began working as a physician's assistant and social worker at the Yang Seng Ie Hospital (Chinese: 养生院) (now Rumah Sakit Husada), founded by doctor Kwa Tjoan Sioe. She worked with women from the poorest neighborhoods of Batavia who were suffering from malnutrition, poverty, and venereal diseases.[8][14] She also participated in clinics for infants, instructing women in child care and birth control.[15] While continuing her work with the physician, Thung founded the First Chinese Girls' Boarding School in the upscale neighborhood of Welgelegen. Serving as its director, and with an all-female staff, she strove to overcome the resistance of Chinese parents to educating their daughters.[7][19] After spending a year and a half in Batavia, she returned to Rotterdam where she completed her doctorate in economics in 1932.[7][14][15]

Thung decided to study medicine at the University of Amsterdam, believing, after her experience working in the hospital, that there was a need for women physicians in Java.[8][15][19] In 1933, she resigned from Chung Hwa Hui and joined the break-away student group, Studieclub van Chineesche Studenten (Study Club of Chinese Students).[20] She continued her involvement in feminist actions and was inspired by Catharine van Tussenbroek, a physician and feminist, who had been involved in the campaign to found a women's party. Thung believed that until women recognized their need for financial independence, a women's party would not be effective. She began writing articles for the Chinese women's monthly journal, Fu Nu Tsa Chih (Chinese: 妇女杂志), founded by Liem Sam Tjiang-Ong (Chinese: 林三昌王) in 1932 in Malang.[19] She published articles in the Dutch women's magazine Vrouw en Gemeenschap (Women and Community), one of which related her struggles with schooling and her search for economic independence.[15]

Salemba, Batavia circa 1940

After graduating in medicine in 1938, Thung returned to Batavia[7] and on 13 September opened a private practice catering to women and children in her family home in the Salemba neighborhood. Modeling a child care course on those she had encountered in the Netherlands, Thung held classes for mothers, undertaking regular health checks on their children. Simultaneously, she published articles advocating for women's suffrage and about women's issues in magazines such as Fu Nu Tsa Chih; Fu Len (Chinese: 妇人), founded by Ong Pik Hwa (Chinese: 王碧华); Maandblad Istri, a Sino-Malay publication founded by Njonja Tjoa Hin Hoei; and the newspaper Sin Po (Chinese: 新报).[19] Her articles in Maandblad Istri, on whose board she served, typically provided medical advice on child care and nutrition or addressed education for women.[7][21]

Though Thung was a member of the Association for Women's Interests and Equal Citizenship in the Netherlands, the affiliate Vereeniging voor Vrouwenkiesrecht in Nederlands Indie (Association for Women's Suffrage in the Dutch East Indies) in reaction to nationalist aims of Indonesian women, pursued enfranchisement only for European women.[22] Thung joined the Chung Hwa Fu Nu Hui (Chinese Women's Association), founded in 1938 and set up the Hutspot-club (Hodge-Podge Club) which provided opportunities for women from different classes and ethnic backgrounds to engage with each other.[7][8][23] She was active on the committee to seek the vote for Chinese women[24] and opposed the government's 1940 proposal to withhold the vote from non-Europeans.[25] Collecting "thousands of signatures", Thung and other women protested the proposal.[7][8]

In 1941, an amendment was proposed by another woman physician, Mrs. J. Ch. Neuyen-Hakker, to the Volksraad (the colonial legislature) which advocated granting the right to vote and hold office to educated women of any race under the same terms as men. To counter the argument that women did not actually want the right to vote, Neuyen-Hakker proposed that women's registration be left to their individual choice to register.[26][27] The proposal was accepted by the Volksraad and approved by the government in November 1941.[25] That year, Thung also participated in the tenth-anniversary celebrations of the First Chinese Girls' Boarding School and the fifth-anniversary of the school's creation of a professional trade school for women.[28]

The following year, when the Japanese invaded Java and interred all the European physicians in 1943, Thung opened a private clinic, San Te Ie Juen to provide medical service to the upper classes.[7] She continued her own private practice and did volunteer work at a local hospital for the duration of World War II.[19] In 1945, when nationalists declared Indonesian independence, Batavia was renamed Jakarta.[29] From 1945 to 1951, Thung was employed by the Ministry of Education to monitor the health of all of the school children in the city.[19] She measured the height and weight of students for the Institute for Public Nutrition and monitored the milk supplements and food provided by the schools to ensure that they were provided in accordance with UNESCO standards.[7][8]

In addition to her educational duties and her private practice, in 1948 Thung ran as a candidate of the Persatuan Tionghoa and was elected as the first woman to serve on the Municipal Council, where her father had also served decades earlier.[7][19] Thung was sent by the Indonesian Government, as an economist with several other Dutch-trained specialists, on several fact-finding missions abroad between 1949 and 1952. She served as an interpreter to several trade delegations in cities such as Helsinki and Moscow, using her skill with English. She made seven trips to China, the first in September 1951[19] and, given her admiration for Mao Zedong and communism, she continued to visit the country regularly between 1955 and 1965.[7] In the aftermath of the 1965 Indonesian coup d'état, support for communism was banned[30] and Thung's travels for the government ceased.[7] When in 1968, the new government implemented an assimilationist policy, requiring Chinese citizens to use an Indonesian name, Thung refused. She emigrated permanently to the Netherlands.[7][19]

Thung settled in Eindhoven, where she continued to work as a physician in a public health center and in a children's home.[19] In 1972, she became a naturalized Dutch citizen[7][31] and then retired in 1974, when she became eligible for the elderly person's pension. In 1978, she returned to China for a visit[7] and was noted for her contributions to charitable organizations, including a fund for repairs to the primary school in her ancestral village, Yunshan (Chinese: 云山) in Hua'an County.[19] On 29 April 1983, Thung was honored as a knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau for her contributions toward the emancipation of women.[7][8][32]